Do you think your building is paying too much for electricity?

You need to do an energy review and possibly change light fittings over to LED.

Or…somehow electricity is disappearing!

We have had this issue at one of our buildings where, when you’ve managed a building for a number of years, you know what to expect in terms of expenditure. When that expenditure suddenly spikes without a genuine reason, it’s time to investigate.

So, the process we applied, first of all, was to assess what had actually changed in the building since our last set of correct bills. Normally, this requires a lot of problem-solving to deduce what is causing the problem. In this instance, it wasn’t so difficult as the change in electricity usage of this building coincided with a restaurant opening on the ground floor.

So started the painful process of identifying the problem, which was fairly quick in that the restaurant was being supplied from the communal electricity supply. The process continues though, now that the restaurant has consumed over £5,000 worth of electricity. Thankfully, in this instance, we were able to negotiate with the landlord of the building and the restaurant owner to gain this money back. The amount is being repaid off the back of this error, but had we not been on the ball as much this error could have run for quite a period of time.

Had the restaurant owner been difficult, we couldn’t have just turned off his electricity supply which was coming off our supply. We would have had to take him to court to force this to stop. We would have also assisted the court process to force repayment of the bills, and whilst that process was ongoing the leaseholders in the building would be paying for the electric supply.

If you have concerns about the amount of electricity being consumed have it investigated quickly. Get an electrician to attend the site and check all the meters and distribution bought to ensure nothing is disappearing from them that shouldn’t be connected.

We saved this building £5,000 and months of problems. Let’s hope other agents are as diligent as we are.